Reviews

The Lost History of Dreams by Kris Waldherr

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clangsydes's review against another edition

4.0

The story begins with Robert Highstead, a post-mortem photographer who was once a historian in Oxford. One day his brother writes to him — their distant cousin Hugh de Bonne had died. He is then tasked to photograph Hugh's remains in Ada's Folly, a chapel situated in Shropshire which he (Hugh) designed for his beloved, Ada. Ada is his long-dead wife, she rests at the same chapel.

Robert travels to Shropshire and stays in Weald House where Ada's niece, Isabelle, presides. But Isabelle who is in mourning does not agree with the task Robert has undertaken. After a series of misfortunes, Isabelle strikes a deal with Robert. He must write about Ada and Hugh's history to see that he fulfills his task.

I picked up this book because I love gothic novels. It's one of my weaknesses and guilty pleasures. It reads like Wuthering Heights but grimmer and darker. The book reads like a nested doll. It's a story within a story and there are many layers to it.

I found Robert to be quite the character. He keeps many secrets but also unravels those kept by Hugh, Ada, and Isabelle, herself. I think what I like generally about this book is it's about artists and writers during the Victorian era. It also carefully describes how it's like to be a post-mortem daguerreotypist. I was schooled in photography when I was in college so I appreciate the details of photography history in the book. I also found the poems in between the chapters very endearing and heartbreaking.

I am giving this book 4 stars. Reading thru the book, I thought that it was going to be a breeze, that I'll finish it immediately. But I found some parts are dragging and rather confusing. I guess it also shows the mental state of our dear historian/photographer Robert Highstead which makes sense as I write this review. But also for some reason, I hated his attachment to his dead wife. Some parts go on about Sida, how she died, how he won't let go of her.

But all in all, it's a fantastic book about love and loss. And I recommend it to anyone who loves gothic romance.

kmmi_booklover's review against another edition

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mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

sagewraith's review against another edition

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mysterious tense

2.5

encounterswiththemoon's review against another edition

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1.0

Spoiler

I don't even know what to say about this book or where to begin. The first 100 pages were not horrible, though the writing was juvenile & corny, the main character unreliable & the surrounding circumstances somewhat unbelievable; I was still interested to see where the story would go. However, after reaching the halfway point, the story was not interesting & no longer held any intrigue.

The main character was so overly focused on his dead wife that he didn't have anything of value to bring to the story. The fact that he was constantly distracted by women (thinking about them physically & becoming aroused) rendered him an unreliable narrator & I was annoyed with him throughout the entirety of the book. We could have actually gotten somewhere 100 pages prior, had he not constantly felt the need to talk & talk & talk about his dead wife's apparitions & then about how turned on he was by the woman in front of him & the imaginary woman he pictured Ada to be. Waldherr had the chance to make the main character truly fascinating; the death of his wife was crazy (to say the least) yet all we see from him is his desire to have sex, kiss his dead wife's apparition, take pictures of dead people & then be horny the rest of the time.

Isabelle was another character (out of the two in which the novel follows) that I hated. It felt as though there was no room for actual dialogue or any dialogue which would advance the plot because she kept reiterating snarky comments & jumping to assumptions about everything. Then, we would have our vapid main character not contest anything that she said & we would have to read about the misconceptions & miscommunications for another chunk of pages.

When the reveal at the end was announced I could not have cared less. I skimmed the last 20 or so pages because the writing of the conversations was so basic & uninteresting that I couldn't stomach it any longer. It would have made more of an impact if Isabelle were revealed as being the daughter earlier on. Instead, we hear about her telling a story, in which she wasn't physically present for half of the time & then acting as though her revealing these intimate details about an ailing woman were somehow a giant power move. She was a nuisance & I didn't care for her at all.

There was real potential for this story to be interesting, disturbing, scary & distinct. Instead, we end up with a storyline that kept taking wild left turns & never went anywhere. There was too much going on with what appears to be little thought for how the story would read when all the ideas, concepts & twists were put together.

manoushp109's review against another edition

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1.75

i learned all about daguerrotyping of the dead which i didn’t know anything about but interesting to learn. it should’ve been left as a book about grief and how he uses hugh and daguerrotyping to overcome his lost love

the church scene was actually so embarrassing

surprised this book is written by a woman considering the amount of times a woman’s tits are mentioned

this book had so much potential im so upset about the end. the last like 100 pages the whole story went to shit. what was the point of the entire middle of all of it was wrong. clearly gothic bc it’s j sadness and then a looping cycle of plot

Spoiler

the story of lucian and adelaide ???? maybe the most wonderful love ever ??? he (the gardeners son) loved her (a spinster) so much that after coming back from war he won her hand and the estate in a game against her dad and loved her so much that when she couldnt have a child he planted rose bushes to feed into her superstition and then when she died in giving birth, he bled out on the thorns of the roses ?? bc he loved her so much ??? and their daughter looked so much like her that he knew he would never stop grieving ?????????? the tragedy of it all. also robert and isabelle shouldnt have been in love. she shouldn’t have lied about her identity. they shouldn’t have fucked in the church. the two of them shouldnt have had a parallel to hugh and ada. i’m so angry. also wtf was the point of grace and owen if they just left.